Dr. Daniel Irrgang

Portrait
21335 Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, C40.313
Fon +49.4131.677-2714, daniel.irrgang@leuphana.de
Research associate, Professorship of Digital Cultures

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Vita

Daniel Irrgang is a scholar in media, art, and culture with a focus on the enactment of knowledge, e.g., in exhibitions, diagrammatic depictions, or algorithmic practices in art and design. His current focus in research and teaching is on environmental humanities, particularly on artistic or aesthetic approaches towards climate science representation, as well as on technological and ideological structures of digital inequalities.

Since October 2025 he is a postdoctoral researcher within the ‘Climate Futures in Digital Cultures’ research section of the wider program ‘Embracing Transformation’ at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, where he is affiliated with the Center for Digital Cultures and the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM). Daniel is also an associated researcher with the ‘Design, Diversity und New Commons’ section at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin.

For the 2024/25 winter term he was visiting professor at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM), Leuphana University of Lüneburg, where he represented the chair for Media Aesthetics and Media Technology. 

Previously, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre Art as Forum, where he conducted research on Bruno Latour’s and Peter Weibel’s concept of ‘Thought Exhibition’ (EU Horizon 2020, grant agreement no. 101028379).

At the Weizenbaum Institute he was, until August 2022, senior researcher and deputy head of the Berlin University of the Artsresearch group ‘Inequality and Digital Sovereignty’ (now: ‘Design, Diversity, and New Commons‘).

Daniel Irrgang completed his doctorate at the University of the Arts Berlin at the Chair of Media Theory/Archaeology of Media on diagrammatics and expanded mind theories. His research topics include visual representations of information from a media theory, art studies, and cognitive science perspective; historiographies and archaeologies of art and media; critical investigations into the premises of human-computer interaction and its roots in Californian Ideology; investigative practices in the field of  art and technology; aesthetics of computer-generated imagery; exhibition and curatorial concepts; and epistemological problems in connection with corporeality and media technology.

From January 2018 to November 2019, Daniel coordinated the research seminar “Critical Zones” with Bruno Latour at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. He has contributed to the exhibition catalogue (MIT Press) and edited the research section of the ZKM exhibition website.
From May 2016 to July 2019 he was research associate in the Media Philosophy and Art Studies section and between May 2016 and March 2018 assistant to the rector at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. From 2013 to 2016 he was a research associate at the Chair of Media Theory (Siegfried Zielinski) at the Institute for Time-Based Media and supervisor at the Vilém Flusser Archive, Berlin University of the Arts.

Daniel Irrgang is the author and editor of numerous books and paperson the history and theory of media, communication and the arts. Together with Florian Hadler and Alice Soiné, he is also editor of the journal Interface Critique and, together with Siegfried Zielinski and Marcel René Marburger, of the book series International Flusser Lectures.  Additionally, he has organised various conferences and other events as well as (co-)curated exhibitions at venues such as the ZKM Karlsruhe, the Einstein Center Digital Future, and the Berlin Academy of Arts.

From 2008 to 2016, Daniel was a founding member of the communication agency AFKM in Berlin.

Projects

Publications

Books and anthologies

  1. Interface Critique 5: Conversing the Book
    Florian Hadler (Editor) , Daniel Irrgang (Editor) , Alice Soiné (Editor) , Lindsey Drury (Editor) , Nina Tolksdorf (Editor) , 2025 Berlin , 339 p.

    Research output: Books and anthologies › Special Journal issue › Research

  2. Artnodes. Journal on Art, Science and Technology 34 (2024): Special Issue: Materiology and Variantology: invitation to dialogue
    Daniel Irrgang (Editor) , Siegfried Zielinski (Editor) , 2024 , 246 p.

    Research output: Books and anthologies › Special Journal issue › Research

  3. Practicing Sovereignty Interventions for Open Digital Futures
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , Bianca Herlo (Author) , 2023 2 ed.

    Research output: Books and anthologies › Collected editions and anthologies › Research

  4. 媒介思维的谱系 – Zur Genealogie des MedienDenkens
    Daniel Irrgang (Editor) , Siegfried Zielinski (Editor) , Florian Hadler (Editor) , 2023 , 650 p.

    Research output: Books and anthologies › Collected editions and anthologies › Research

  5. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society 3/1 (2023): Special issue on the Weizenbaum Conference 2022: Practicing Sovereignty – Interventions for Open Digital Futures
    Daniel Irrgang (Editor) , Bianca Herlo (Editor) , Martin Krzywdzinski (Editor) , 2023

    Research output: Books and anthologies › Special Journal issue › Research

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Journal contributions

  1. A Cartogram of Vilém Flusser’s Nomadism
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , Clemens Jahn (Illustrator) , 01.11.2025 , in: Flusser Studies, 2025, 40 , p. 1-3 , 3 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research

  2. Critical Zones and Thought Exhibitions
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 19.07.2025 , in: Spool, 12, 2 , p. 7-18 , 12 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

  3. NODE “MATERIOLOGY AND VARIANTOLOGY: INVITATION TO DIALOGUE”
    Siegfried Zielinski (Author) , Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 01.07.2024 , in: Artnodes, 2024, 34 , p. 1-3 , 3 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

  4. Projective Imagination: Vilém Flusser’s Concept of the Technical Image
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 01.12.2023 , in: Theory, Culture and Society, 40, 7-8 , p. 73-90 , 18 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

  5. Exposition de pensée/Thought Exhibition: Sur les zones critiques, les cosmogrammes et l’impossibilité d’un dehors
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 01.01.2023 , in: Les Cahiers du Musée national d'art moderne, 2023, 164 , p. 61-69 , 9 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

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Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

  1. Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste, 1972, Louis Bec
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , Anita Jóri (Author) , 01.01.2025 , p. 61 , 1 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contribution of Exihibition catalogues › Research

  2. Jeffrey Shaw and Dirk Groeneveld (The Legible City)
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , Siegfried Zielinski (Author) , 01.01.2025 , p. 197 , 1 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contribution of Exihibition catalogues › Research

  3. Apple I, 1976, Steve Wozniak
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 01.01.2025 , p. 243 , 1 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contribution of Exihibition catalogues › Research

  4. Telehor, 1919, Dénes von Mihály
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 01.01.2025 , p. 153 , 1 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contribution of Exihibition catalogues › Research

  5. Project of Music for Magnetic Tape: Imaginary Landscape No. 5, 1952/53, John Cage
    Daniel Irrgang (Author) , 01.01.2025 , p. 53 , 1 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contribution of Exihibition catalogues › Research

View all publications

Activities

  1. On critical approaches to GenAI in art and aesthetics
    Daniel Irrgang (Speaker) , Mick With Berland (Speaker) , Tanya Ravn Ag (Coauthor)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  2. Sensitive Tree Infrastructures: Artistic Representations of Critical Zone Science
    Daniel Irrgang (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  3. Critical Zones and Thought Exhibitions
    Daniel Irrgang (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  4. Critical Zone/s: Infrastructures and Aesthetics of Climate Change Research
    Daniel Irrgang (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  5. Critical Zone(s) Observatories: Modeling Infrastructures of Climate Science in the Art Museum
    Daniel Irrgang (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

View all activities

Press / Media

Prizes

  1. Postdoctoral Fellowships – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
    Daniel Irrgang (Recipient) ,

    Prize: external Prizes, scholarships, distinctions, appointments › Research

View all prizes

Courses

Approaching climate science through art and design: representations of the Anthropocene
Daniel Irrgang
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The question of representation of the Anthropocene – or however to call the anthropogenic ruptures in the New Climatic Regime (Latour 2017) – is a pressing one in science communication as well as in critical positions of art and design (Arènes et al. 2018; Davis and Turpin 2015; Demos 2017; Dürbeck 2018; Holloway 2022). This is particularly true if not only awareness of the planetary predicament is to be raised, but also if alternative modes of inhabiting a common planet are to be conceived to realize viable climate futures. However, due to the multifarious causes and effects of the hyperobject climate change (Morton 2013), strategies of representation or depiction struggle with tensions between reductionism and overcomplexity: On the one hand we encounter, e.g., the seemingly clear-cut Nature-Culture dualism and the hierarchical universalisms it has produced throughout European Modernity; on the other we find hybrids (Latour 1993) challenging such a dichotomy, as well as complex climate science data and the vast temporal and spatial scales they encompass (Clarke 2020; Haraway 2018; Latour 2020; Margulis 1998).

The aim of this seminar is to map these challenges and to analyze conceptual, artistic, and design approaches towards making these tensions graspable. We want to identify ways in which artists, designers, and “the public” – from exhibition visitors to popular science journal readers to climate activists – can critically engage with the complexities of the anthropogenic forcings and their effects on human and more-than-human communities. As Bruno Latour (2020, 19) has put it while describing his exhibition “Critical Zones – Observatories for Earthly Politics” at the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (Germany): “Changes in cosmology cannot be registered without changes in representation – in all tenors of the word.” The seminar themes and approaches are based on the course teacher’s collaboration with Bruno Latour at the ZKM and the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, where they conducted a two-year research seminar with postgraduates, artists, designers, and curators to conceptually prepare the exhibition “Critical Zones”.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of this course, participants are invited to integrate their individual PhD or related topics, if they align (in the widest sense) with the themes described above. As for the concrete course outcome or exam, participants can choose between two alternative formats, (1) a curatorial concept or (2) a glossary entry. Option (1) entails the development of an own (conceptionally and operatively sound) concept for a fictional exhibition (in art, science, or design) around themes touched up on in our course and, ideally, connected to the individual PhD project. For those participants who seek to expand their publication portfolio, option (2) provides the possibility to contribute an entry to the glossary “Environmental Humanities – Emergent Key Terms.” This ongoing online publication project at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Humanities is edited by the course teacher in cooperation with Ulrik Ekman: https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/art-and-earth/environmental-humanities-glossary/. Participants choosing this option can select a glossary term – aligning with the themes of the course and their individual PhD topic – to develop as a glossary entry. An editorial review process will support text editing and eventually decide if entries are accepted for publication.
Next appointment:
Friday, 2026-06-05 at 10:15
Room: C 14.202 Seminarraum